Christopher Ryan wrote a short profile of Alan Watts for Psychology Today. He included this quote from Watts' about the self-importance of humans:
“The point is that rapport with the marvelously purposeless world of nature gives us new eyes for ourselves – eyes in which our very self-importance is not condemned, but seen as something quite other than what it imagines itself to be. In this light, all the weirdly abstract and pompous pursuits of men are suddenly transformed into natural marvels of the same order as the immense beaks of the toucans and hornbills, the fabulous tails of the birds of paradise, the towering necks of the giraffes, and the vividly polychromed posteriors of the baboons… Seen thus, the self-importance of man dissolves in laughter.”
Alan Watts: priest, scholar, monk, author, trickster guru
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I remember Alan Watts from his program "Philosophy East and West" on KPFA, Berkeley. I met him several times at KPFA fund raisers. Whatever his priorities were, dentistry wasn't one of them. I met his daughter once and she wasn't very keen on him. At the time his was the only act in town and he had quite a following. Zen was a hot item in the SF Bay Area in the 1950s.
I read one of his books once. The part I liked best about it appeared as a footnote. It was to the effect that as we moved into air travel all destinations became more like each other. That actually being on the road to get from place to place was a different experience. Can't argue with that.That was before there was a Mickey D's and a Starbucks every 50 feet.
wow, this is a welcome reminder. i'll have to dig out my old copy of "the book: on the taboo against knowing who you are" and give it another read.
Watts is amazing.
I got started by listening to the iTunes podcast. Great way to get started.
His work has changed my life and confirmed what I somehow already knew.
RAW is my favorite author but Watts is probably the most important author (to me) in my library.
@4 - I cannot count how many times I have encouraged people to read 'the book', I would make it required reading in all schools if I could.
My wife recently started reading a currently popular author who makes great claims about zen buddhism, I skimmed one and nearly ran to get her my Watts.
This reminds me of my wife and i taking a recent late night bike ride through a local cemetary.
we found it hysterical, all the giant phallic postmortem concrete boners towering over some of the graves. you could almost hear the dead screaming "look at my eternal dong!"
@#6 Really. The Book changed my life. None-too-soon for the 60s either. After it, I wasted (a relative term) 15 years reading more stuff like it. (On the theory: that can't be all there is!)
Alan's books are SHORT. Always a good sign. But then, so is a helluva good laugh at yourself. Nietszche loved to suffer - Alan's just, like, aw fukkit: One.
Kind of ironic, though, isn't it, considering how puffed up Watts got doing his mock modesty routine?
Well, yeah.
I've often thought many film directors would benefit from a hand-mirror with a photograph of a baboon's ass inset.
There was an album of haiku produced in the 1950s at a time when no one here knew what haiku was. Alan Watts did the English reading and Henry Jacob's wife (don't recall her name) did the Japanese reading. Each reading was punctuated by a short interval of music from traditional Japanese instruments. It's a collectors item.
"the self-importance of man dissolves in laughter" reminds me of _Stranger in a Strange Land_ which I read last week.
I was thinking the other day, that Alan Watts has almost become like one of the personality constructs, out of Gibson's Neuromancer...you can still dig the cat, all these years later...
This made me look up one of my favourite series of short animations: Alan Watts Theatre.
http://www.freshminds.com/animation/alan_watts_theater.html
@1 Dorothy:
Do tell! What podcast do you find Alan Watts on?
I appreciate the sound of good fart in a inappropriate setting where most everyone is pious
to deny it yet they wish for the relief.
The man was national treasure unrecognized yet
best that he wasn't. The establishment would turn
him into golden turd. His lectures are funny and
thought provokingly awesome.
#9 Ron Coleman sez, "Kind of ironic, though, isn't it, considering how puffed up Watts got doing his mock modesty routine?"
Yeah, I thought this page's title "enjoying the spectacle of self-importance" meant that Watts was going to be amusedly reflecting on how puffy his writing could get at times.
Maybe admitting it for oneself starts with admitting it for humanity, then for a famous personage, then for "the ego"...
How clever we are for having spotted Watts' puffiness! I blame our attachment to irony.
http://www.alanwattspodcast.com/
You know, it seems to me Watt's argument loses its legs if one takes into consideration that these laughably self-important humans are not only very capable of destroying the planet, but currently giving it a good solid effort.
Destroying the planet? Methinks you have fallen into the trap of self importance. This planet will be still here long after our descendents have wiped themselves out. And nothing of value will be lost.
This planet will be still here long after our descendants have wiped themselves out.
The Martians once felt the same way.
"The Martians once felt the same way."
And Mars is still here.
We are theoretically capable of destroying the planet but it would take such a focused and concentrated collective effort that it would dwarf any previous human undertaking to such a degree that its likelihood of being attempted much less succeeding is beyond ludicrous.
Lizardman, we only have to destroy the top kilometer or so (and few km of atmosphere) to achieve the same effect.
Life is a thin skin on a hot rock.
"Life is a thin skin on a hot rock."
Definition of Australia.
Methinks you yourself have fallen in the trap of self importance. Because By "our descendents" you mean, of course, the descendendents of the western world.
Way before the planet is destroyed, it will be western so-called civilization. Lots of people in other cultures will survive, and they will get a chance to give it another (hopefully radically different) go.
Alan Watts is the most pompous author on Zen pickup lines ("pat her knee, don't stroke it") I ever read, second only to D. T. Suzuki. He lost me in 1959, but I carried The Way of Zen around from place to place and job to job for decades in a kind of forlorn hope that someday it might have the intended effect.
It's funny that he would discuss "self-importance" without blushing. As far as reducing human endeavor to the shiny brilliance of a baboon's ass goes, it's simpler even than that. Home sapiens is the most gorgeous bioluminescent species on the planet, and aliens come here to watch the show from space, feel the glow and engender progeny, the way Japanese couples go to Alaska for the Northern Lights.
MDH, destroying life is not the same thing as destroying the planet.
Watts was zen jazz, ya gets it or ya don't.
This planet will be still here long after our descendents have wiped themselves out. And nothing of value will be lost.
But what if we're the eyes of the galaxy? Would you blind such a beautiful beast?
So, to tie the threads here together, what is the sound of one empty kilometer's depth of Earth clapping?